Summary
• Sawmiller Piveteau Bois is increasingly focused on branded finished products.
• More French softwood mills are moving into lamination.
• Four mills have set up a glulam joint venture.
• Douglas fir is France’s fastest expanding softwood species.

Waste not, want not are increasingly the watchwords of the timber industry worldwide – but the French softwood sector seems to have taken them to heart more than most. Getting the most out of the wood resource makes more environmental and economic sense by the day, and across France sawmillers are investing to add value to their core sawn product and utilise every scrap of fibre.

A prime example of this multi-tasking approach is Piveteau Bois, a business headquartered in Sainte Florence near Nantes, with a second production site in the Limousin region and a mill and finished products plant in Poland. It’s a sizeable business, processing around 350,000m³ of logs annually (70/30 SPF/Douglas fir) and last year turning over €75m. But that’s only part of the story.

The core strength of the company today, said director Philippe Piveteau, is not scale, but diversity of output and flexibility.

“Rather than holding large stocks of a single product, increasingly customers want a range of different items and mixed loads for rapid delivery,” he said. “This is where we’ve focused. Our finished products output is now 160,000m³ a year, with around 33,000m³ in stock at any time ready for immediate despatch.”

Broader customer base

This approach, he said, has broadened the company’s customer base and so far enabled it to weather tougher conditions in the French construction market.

“The building sector is reported to be headed for contraction of 25% this year, but we’re still growing at 20%,” said Mr Piveteau, adding that recent multi-million euro sawmill investment in Sainte Florence has further enhanced the company’s ability to service a wide market, with improved sorting and grading ensuring the right material goes to the right end use.

Piveteau has also combined product diversification with major investment in branding. “This sets our range apart and at the same time gives it a single identity; strengthening awareness of our ability to supply different products from a single source.”

The main Piveteau label is Durapin, which covers cladding, acoustic panelling, safety barriers, a huge variety of poles and stakes, fencing, pergolas, decking and other garden products, including timber swimming pool kits. The ‘strapline’ for the brand is “Le bois extreme” (extreme wood) underlining product durability, with the bulk of the range treated with Tanalith E.

Most Durapin sales are in France, but exports now account for around 5% of Piveteau’s turnover and it has considered targeting its garden range at the UK. “So far, we’ve struggled to find a distribution channel for our quality of product; the fencing, for instance uses larger dimension timber than the norm in the UK,” said Mr Piveteau. “But we do see potential.”

Lamwood brand

Another Piveteau brand gaining momentum is Lamwood, which covers laminated joinery products and SPF and Douglas fir two and three layer “duo” and “trio” glulam beams.

“We see big potential in this market both in France, where timber construction is growing at 25% a year, and abroad,” said Mr Piveteau. “The strong euro makes it difficult to compete in the UK, but we are selling to Spain and see possibilities in Germany.”

Ensuring 100% raw material utilisation, Piveteau uses wood waste to heat its kilns and has a thriving wood pellet business. It also produces ‘Wex’ sawdust and polypropylene composite cladding and decking. “Because it’s 69% timber, Wex can be PEFC-certified,”said Mr Piveteau. “We think it’s being used as a tropical timber substitute, but it’s also for people who don’t like wood!”

Four softwood mills in the Jura region near the Swiss border, have taken another diversification route, pooling resources in 2002 in a plant to produce two and three layer glulam.

Called ProLignum, the ultra modern 15,000m³ a year facility uses mainly spruce, but also some pine and Douglas fir. It’s geared to produce a very stable end product, with the worst knots removed and only sapwood used “to minimise cracking”.

“The end product is C24, when most constructional timber in France is C18,” said Etienne Renaud, managing director of one of the founder mills, Scierie Renaud. “It not only gives less movement in use, its stability improves machining. In fact, it’s just as suited to processing on a CNC processing centre as steel.”

The beams, he acknowledged, are up to twice the price of their conventional timber equivalent. “But that’s offset by the time and money end users spend in processing and in the reduction of remedial work they cause in use.”

The bulk of production is sold in standard planed 13.5m lengths but ProLignum also machines house kit components itself.

Growth

The company is growing at about 10% a year and now sees potential for a third shift. It is also spreading its sales network. “We’ve exported to Switzerland and Spain and longer term we’re also interested in the growing UK timber-building sector,” said Mr Renaud.

The aspect of Monnet-Seve that makes the biggest initial impact is the sheer scale and productivity of the operation. Turnover is around €110m and its four sites consume 850,000m³ of logs a year and are hugely automated; the second biggest at St Vulbas near Lyons, for example, processes 170,000m³ a year with just 30 staff per shift. But the 99 sorting bins in the plant’s log yard highlight that this is not a simple high volume, commodity business either.

“Our aim is maximum volume, but also maximum yield, which means producing a wide range of end product and ensuring from the log onwards that the raw material is optimised to the use,” said sales manager Thomas Seve.

Processed products

Monnet-Seve produces not just a wide range of sawn timber, but also further processed product: mouldings, decking, fencing and profiles for easy assembly outdoor items, from sheds to children’s swings. And mirroring the increase in harvesting of the species in France, the big recent trend, has been growth in output of these items in Douglas fir.

“The durability and versatility of Douglas are making it more and more popular with our customers in France and abroad and we’re now the leading supplier in the country,” said Mr Seve.

The company exports 30% of total output, principally to Europe and North Africa, and the UK is an especially good market for Douglas fir, with large dimension beams particularly strong sellers.

For the future, Monnet-Seve says it plans to explore yet more new areas and it is another company pinning its colours to glulam. The new factory will have annual capacity of 50,000m³ and should be on stream by the end of the year.